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May 31, 2010

Happy Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a United States public holiday that takes place on the last Monday of May. It was formerly known as Decoration Day. This holiday commemorates U.S. men and women who died in military service for their country. It began first to honor Union soldiers who died during the American Civil War. After World War I, it expanded to include those who died in any war or military action. Today, many Americans use Memorial Day weekend to also honor family members who have passed away.

The weekend of June 12th and 13th, the US Air Force is sponsoring three cycling events; the Clarendon Cup, the Crystal Cup, and the Crystal Ride. All of these events are in support of the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. One of the goals of this fund is to support the design and construction of the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE), an advanced facility dedicated to research, diagnosis and treatment of military personnel and veterans suffering from traumatic brain injury (TBI) and psychological health issues. On Sunday June 13th, I plan on riding as a member of Team Intrepid Heroes.

May 27, 2010

Back in February rumors about the coming Android 2.1 update for the Verizon Droid Eris by HTC were fairly rampant, however after weeks of checking my upgrade status page, I got tired of looking and set my Eris aside. Let's face it Android 1.5 was not very exciting and the responsiveness touch was frustrating and just led me back to my iPhone.

Last week I decided to check once more and I was happy to see that the update was available for my device. The upgrade experience was excellent and fairly seamless. There was no need to connect the Eris to a PC, the process was performed over the air and I used Verizon's 3G network. It took two steps, download, and then confirm reboot/upgrade. I did lose my Exchange ActiveSync settings and icon/page customizations.

I am now using the Verizon Eris again and love the integration between the calendar, Google maps on the PC and Android's Google Maps/Navigation. The navigation works very well. I would say that it is one of the killer out of the box functions in Android. No wonder rumors that Jobs and Ballmer may announce Bing as the default search/map engine for the iPhone at WWDC may actually be true. Update: The rumor that Ballmer would be showing up at WWDC seem to be false, however the switch from Google to Bing still has legs (Gizmodo).

It is too bad that this is probably the end of the road for updates on the Eris.

May 17, 2010

The answer is more than likely yes, but what I find interesting is that Steve Jobs has been unusually vocal for such a secretive person. It seems that critics are pushing his buttons. Although his responses have been well thought through from the Apple corporate perspective, I think it just gives more ammunition to the critics to answer them. CNN's Money web site had an interesting piece today "What's the bug up Apple's @$$" which describes Apple's behavior towards critics. This fits right into the published email thread between Steve Jobs and Gawker writer Ryan Tate. Are we heading into a soap opera...

During the iPhone's ascendency, Apple's response to critics was very tame and yes Steve Jobs was sick for a big part of that time, however over the last three years I have been impressed how Apple has added key features in the iPhone OS demanded by critics and users. These include Apps, cut and paste, turn by turn GPS, voice control, Bluetooth A2DP stereo streaming (although no AVRCP remote control), MS Exchange ActiveSync, and probably some others that I am forgetting. The Apps and the cut and paste were biggies. I remember Apple's saying Apps were not necessary, since they provided such a rich web browser environment. Apple came to their senses and provided a good development platform, although at the time no multitasking; now we are on the cusp of having that feature implemented. We went through the same pattern with Cut and Paste, first it was we did not need it with the new touch paradigm, then that morphed into we need our time to design correctly (they did).

My hope and point is that the same will be true for Flash. I agree that HTML 5 and H.264 are probably the future. However for a device like the iPad which is supposed to be about consuming content and Steve Jobs touting it as an all-encompassing browsing device, how can you ignore a major part of the web? On the iPhone not having flash can be irritating, but since it is not my primary browsing device I can live without it. If I were to buy an iPad I would want to use as a primary browser and not having Flash is a show stopper. This does not make sense to me, and I think Steve Jobs ego is getting in the way. I am hoping that Apple will go through its no no phase, then will accede to users demands, and go through a thoughtful design and implementation (provide Adobe with the APIs they need to be efficient) as it did with Apps, cut and paste, and multitasking.

If you want to make your voice sort of heard, you can sign a petition at Flash4iPad.com. I say sort of, but the more users and potential customers complain it will start to weigh on Apple's future plans. 500 iPad users were asked by Laura DiDio, principal analyst at ITIC about Flash. According to the CNN article I mentioned previously, "she found that customers are clamoring for Flash support, but said they would continue to buy Apple products even without it". It is a mixed message but we are talking about the initial customer pool and not the average customer who is now buying the iPhone.

Until then my common sense is telling not to purchase an iPad, even though my techy side really wants one. I feel resigned to wait until next March to see what happens with iPad 2.0.

May 16, 2010

The weekend of June 12th and 13th, the US Air Force is sponsoring three cycling events; the Clarendon Cup, the Crystal Cup, and the Crystal Ride. All of these events are in support of the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. One of the goals of this fund is to support the design and construction of the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE), an advanced facility dedicated to research, diagnosis and treatment of military personnel and veterans suffering from traumatic brain injury (TBI) and psychological health issues. On Sunday June 13th, I plan on riding as a member of Team Intrepid Heroes.